Despite the studious efforts of Jesus Christ himself (a recurring Kumail Nanjiani), Fox’s Bless The Harts has run out of divine steam after two seasons on the air. Variety reports tonight that the animated comedy, which stars a ridiculous number of comedy ringers—Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Jillian Bell, Ike Barinholtz, Fortune Feimster, and more—will end with its second season in May of this year.
Developed by former Saturday Night Live writer Emily Spivey, Bless The Harts was also heavily influenced by one of Spivey’s earlier gigs, Mike Judge’s King Of The Hill. (To the extent that the two series both feature the same Chuck Mangione-endorsed big box store, Mega Lo Mart.) Harts centered on Wiig’s Jenny Hart, attempting to raise an artistically minded daughter (Bell) in small-town North Carolina while dealing with boyfriend Wayne (Barinholtz) and mom Betty (Rudolph). Also, sometimes she talks to Jesus, which, hey: It’s good to have friends.
But Hart never exactly did miracles in the ratings, and, despite Fox being willing to give it a second season to work out the bugs—again, just look at that cast—it appears to have decided that enough is now enough. Bless The Harts is survived by Duncanville, The Great North, and whatever amazing projects this group of writers and performers ends up putting their energies into next.
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Fuck Fox. This show deserved better. They barely promoted it and wonder why it didn’t do well. The irony. Plus we’re in a pandemic and this decision could bite them back in the ass.
Fox always seems to deliberately neglect certain shows, ones that could give them money. It’s so absurd
“Family Guy” was basically an afterthought in its third season, being bounced around all over the schedule before getting cancelled. Now they won’t let the show die.
Futurama got screwed just as bad, but the show was also linear and I consider it a blessing that it died before it got old like Family Guy and the Simpsons. KITH died exactly when it needed to, though Fox had also screwed them for years. But yeah Family Guy needs to be put down, it’s so depressing how much they made everyone but Stewie of all people completely awful
I like that direction of Family Guy and think they should push it. Lois is low-key acknowledged as being a cheating tramp. Make her affairs main storylines. Make Chris the psychopath he’s hinted at. Or Meg.
I’m still steamed about Greg The Bunny.
It really sucks this show deserved better
It’s too bad. That show never really clicked for me despite the slew of great vocal talent. Maybe another season would’ve helped, but you only can get so many chances. (Heck, Bob’s Burgers didn’t really become Bob’s Burgers till season 3)
There were alot of good episodes in Bob’s first three seasons.
I like extra-intense Louise, but in general I can’t get through any of the early Bobs Burgers episodes without actively despising at least one of the main characters.
My mom felt the same way when I showed her a episode. She also thought Linda and Louise had annoying voices.
Yeah, I gave up on Hart after the first few eps. Seemed like it was trying too hard to be King of the Hill-ish, kinda.Although I liked Bob’s right away (Loren Bouchard Home Movies connection), I never really appreciated how good the first couple of seasons were til later. Not many shows can pull off a premiere ep based around cannibalism.
King of the Hill-ish, kinda I mean it shared its creator was a KoTH writer , and it exists in the same universe as King, so theres that.
Oh, interesting. Didn’t realize it was supposed to be in the same universe. Did they reference Megalomart or something?
Yup , they did.
They did and have two episodes where the sole setting is that. And they’re by far the best ones. They’re funny and sweet.
It found its feet after the first few episodes and is pretty good, probably better than similar show Duncanville.Hopefully it gets picked up elsewhere if thats a possibility..
Yeah, i’m bummed. Of the newer shows, this was by far the strongest and funniest. (duncanville is just ok, and the great north is not overly funny- although it’s slowly getting better).
Great North is gonna keep getting better. The Molyneux sisters are responsible for some of the best Bob’s eps, so I see a lot of potential.
The Great North became my instant favorite for its casual queerness. I can’t think of another animated sitcom that does that so effortlessly (maybe Big Mouth? I haven’t seen it in awhile).
Hell yeah. I’d throw Steven Universe & Korra into that mix, but they were more of a casual, youth (nonetheless essential) version.There’s a bright future for the the Molyni.. true champions of humanity.
Love the great north but I will miss this show
I hope so. And I’m sticking with it for now…
I hope so. And I’m sticking with it for now…
This is a shame. I watched the Duncanville and Great North premieres and thought they were both crap. Bless The Harts was entertaining.
You gotta watch more than 1 episode lol.
This news is worse than that time I was a funny occupation for a person who was famous in the 80s.
This is a shame. The show was hit or miss in its first season but I think its really hit its stride in the 2nd season. Every episode has been genuinely enjoyable. But I could see the writing on the wall. Fox’s animation block is already overstuffed and since they’re never gonna cancel The Simpsons or Family Guy (someone please put it out of its misery), there just isn’t enough room for Harts, Duncanville, and The Great North.
I really enjoyed two of the three most recent episodes of Family Guy. I thought the world had spun off its axis. Usually I get bored after 10 minutes.
Same. It was the first few in a longass time that were actually pretty decent. I don’t know if they had new writers for those specific episodes, but whatever they did, we need more of that if they are gonna continue this show for infinity
Oddly enough, Jesus wasn’t a help because he wasn’t there. Although Kumail Nanjiani’s still in the credits, he’s been in only a couple episodes this season. Unfortunately way too much time was spent with Betty being on her bullshit, which worked in small doses because Maya Rudolph is a fucking goddess, but as the entire A- or B-plot of several consecutive episodes? It got to be too much.I absolutely loved Violet and Wayne as characters, and would have loved to see them develop more. And Jenny had a near-perfect balance of kookiness and straight-man persona depending on what the story called for. Shame, but at least it lasted longer than “Allen Gregory.”
Yeah for me Wayne and Violet were absolutely the standouts, whenever the show focused on them more I feel the show was at its best.
Do not compare this to that piece of boring crap.
I wasn’t, except in my relief that this good show at least got two seasons (and deserved a lot more), whereas the other shouldn’t have made it past the first pitch meeting.
Ah okay yeah. I disliked both Allen Gregory and Bordertown and stopped both after just two episodes. Should have never got past the pitch meeting and I will agree with that. Imo Bordertown was worse cause at least Allen Gregory tried something a little different. Bordertown was copy paste family guy with racism and unfunny cringy jokes.
Bless the Harts deserved at least one more season. This season is a massive improvement over the first, despite the viewership being half down from s1. I’ll never forgive Fox for ending this show too soon.
Hey, it’s at least more than Napoleon Dynamite or Sit Down, Shut Up got!
Yeah but unlike those it didn’t suck,
I’m ok with this. It’s a nice show, I enjoy spending twenty minutes of my time with it, but after two seasons it didn’t properly establish itself. Also this is one animated show where I kept thinking “this could’ve work better as a live action show”. There wasn’t enough animated outlandishness to build its identity as an animated show.
“Nice” is probably an apt descriptor – the show had an easy-going likability, but unfortunately it just wasn’t very funny or interesting.
Not gonna lie, the ugly Bitmoji-style character designs is what put me off this show.
Yeah, I know. I mean, I’ve liked or loved a lot of shows that could be called objectively “ugly”, like Bob’s Burgers, Home Movies, Beavis & Butthead, Bojack Horseman, to name a few, but at least those all had a style to them. They had a look that set them apart. This is just so incredibly bland and indistinct.
And I really dislike saying that, because I know how much effort goes into making even a mid-budget animated series. But this is kind of a thing where, I feel like animated series created by comedians that have little to no background in animation don’t really know how to use the medium. Not to shit-talk Wiig, that’s just my opinion on why some of these shows can just look so dull, visually, and not take advantage of what animation can do.
Wiig didn’t create the show. It was created by Emily Spiivy who wrote for King of the Hill – hence Mike Judge giving them the okay to use the Meg-a-Lo Mart. Wiig just has a producer credit.
Yeah, I realized that shortly after I ran out of the edit window. My mistake.
I misread the article before replying.
Dude lord and Miller are executive producers on this and creator Emily Spivey used to write for King of the Hill. Don’t think they lack animation experience lol.
Lord and Miller were “executive producers” which can mean either everything or nothing. Spivey is a writer, and all power to her, but she’s not an animator. This show looked like a Facebook ad for a mobile phone game.
Fair but Lord and Miller really liked the show as a whole and definitely were involved in making it, unlike Hoops where they went away after it was greenlit at Netflix. You could say the mobile game thing for season 1 but for season 2 I hard disagree. Love the artstyle change.
Yeah, a lot of my initial response [to a new show] is the animation, it needs to be stylized – and in the best shows, there’s some of kind of magic style=voices=tone equation that works transparently and brings everyone together. I tried a few times, I even, felt like I might be able to “get used” to the animation, but nothing else clicked either.
had its moments, but not enough. It was still very odd to see local details of where I live (as in stuff literally down the street from me) make it on TV.
Yes, I can vouch for the High Point, NC stuff being dead on, which isn’t too surprising as that’s where the creator grew up…
Now they just have to cancel one more show and they’ll have the time slot to bring back Firefly!
Throwing Harts in Fox’s eyes.
Not to get into the ‘face talent vs VOs’ debate but were any of the voice actors actual writers on the show because if not, they’re basically just walking in to get checks which always feels tiresome.Guess i’ll randomly catch it on Adult Swim for 6 months in 2 years?
I’m definitely on board for a VO vs live action actor debate! Billy West and Tress MacNeille are national treasures!
I’m 100% in support of VOs unless the comedians are also writers on the show or you want a very specific VO talent that you can’t get from your normal crowd. There is just no reason to bring in these expensive voices for what amounts to ‘oh hey, I know that voice!’I’ve not watched Big Mouth but I get the gist that a number of the VO talent are also involved with punching up their own lines and are friends of the creators so i’m more lenient on that issue.
These people knew Emily Spivey personally, so they definitely loved it. There were nearly zero auditions with this show I heard.
That’s generally how this stuff happens if it isn’t a pet project from a comedy troupe that made it…
I’ll be damned, I’ve never even heard of this. I just use Hulu for fox offerings, so unless Hulu’s pushing it I guess I’m completely out of the loop. Great North’s pretty enjoyable, Hulu algorithms wanted me to see that one I guess.
Try it out?
I was a huge king of the hill fan and animation fan in general, and this is the first i’m hearing of this.
Outside of “King of the Hill” and “Bob’s Burgers” Fox has a pretty dismal track record of working cartoons in around ‘The Simpsons’. Maybe flip back to live action shows.
Well they’re trying and it will be a shame to see this one go.
I think my problem with the show (aside from the character designs, with their off-putting combination of bland and ugly) was that its format was at odds with its ideas. A big theme on the show was that it was about a poor family and the plots were about them struggling to afford basic needs, something that other sitcoms tend to gloss over.
The problem is, it’s stuck in the Fox animation format where all plots are completely self-contained and everything resets at the end. Meaning they were in a kind of fantasy poverty where they always had JUST enough money to get by and any financial problems resolved themselves in half an hour. And if you’re going to do a show about poverty where there’s no real danger of the characters running out of money, then you’re not actually doing a show about poverty. This might sound like a weird thing to nitpick, but the working class angle was the only thing distinguishing this show from Fox’s other stuff. Take that away and it just feels like the bland first draft for King of the Hill.
It’s the network’s requirements to write episodes like that, I’m sure they want continuity but fox doesn’t let them.
I’m not saying it’s the creators’ fault, but it’s still a major flaw with the show.
Fair enough. But all fox animated sitcoms have that structure.
I adore that entire cast and still I’ve never heard of this until now.
Gonna try it out?
I thought the first season really hit its stride in the Xmas/”snowstorm” episode.
The only episode I did not like. Hated Daniel and what he did was so awful.
King of the Hill worked because Hank never actually had to learn a lesson, his own morality was the lesson. Hank was a straight arrow not entirely because he understood right and wrong (he was wrong about a lot of things) but because he would never make excuses for wrong once he realized it.This show played a lot looser with those rules, so it always felt to me like the characters were just modeling good while making excuses for their bad milieu. Hank never tried to have anything both ways. He would despise that idea.I really did not like the Harts, despite high hopes b/c of the voice talent. Duncanville is a lot better but ditto. So I was not expecting much from The Great North, but have loved it so far. Beef has a lot of Hank in him.
Eh I don’t agree with that. There are lessons in the show. Sure they’re not as common place as King of the Hill, but the show was never trying to be KOTH. I think a lot of people assumed that the show’s premise meant trying to be KOTH. If you’ve seen a few season 2 episodes, it’s definitely its own show in a good way.